Car seat safety ranking

How our safety ratings work

To show how safe our car seats are, we’ve developed a car seat safety ranking system in addition to the independent ratings from consumer organisations. Here we explain how it works.

Safety groups

We divide our car seats into 3 safety groups:

Good safety

Very good safety

Excellent safety

The rankings are based on:

the regulation the car seat complies with

the type of installation it uses

Regulations and installationi-Size (R129) versus R44 compliant car seatsCar seats that comply with the R44/04 safety regulations are safe and legal. But car seats that comply with the new i-Size regulation are far safer. This is because i-Size:

provides improved head and neck protection

provides better side-impact protection

minimises the chance of parents putting their children in forward-facing seats too early

reduces the chance of incorrect installation

ISOFIX versus car seat belt installationISOFIX is an international standardised fitting system that provides the safest, easiest and quickest way to install a child car seat. There’s a higher risk of incorrect installation and use with child car seats that use car seat belts. With ISOFIX the risk of incorrect installation is minimised.

Crash test scoresOf course at Maxi-Cosi we test our car seats to the highest possible standards in crash and dynamic tests. But these tests are not just to provide Maxi-Cosi safety rankings. They also give us an independent score from the European Test Centre (ETC) that is focussed mainly on crash and user tests. The ETC, which is made up of independent consumer organisations, tests all sorts of car seats annually. Find out more about the ETC http://www.international-testing.org/ The ETC crash test score is based on 2 tests:

Dynamic safetyThis car seat safety rating is based on a frontal impact and side-impact crash test. A dummy is placed in a car seat with advanced sensors to measure the impact of forces on its body. ADAC, together with other partners, then calculates the final score based on these measurements.

Ease of useThis tests 5 steps ranging from placing the car seat in the car to tightening the belts around the dummy. The test looks at the risk of misuse and installing the car seat incorrectly.

The combination of these tests provides a score, which is translated into a star rating with 5 stars being the best and 0 stars being the worst.